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Everaldo and Jimmac On Linux Art and Usability 119

Posted by CowboyNeal from the getting-to-know dept.
Eugenia writes "Metin Amiroff of OSNews interviewed the well known artists of KDE and GNOME, Everaldo and Jimmac. They discuss their first steps into Linux, the applicationss they use and why Linux still doesn't have all the professional applications and support they need for their day to day work, their inspiration, the state of the Linux desktop visually and usability-wise, the SVG factor and their future plans for KDE and GNOME."
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Everaldo and Jimmac On Linux Art and Usability More

Everaldo and Jimmac On Linux Art and Usability

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  • Art / os (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NIK282000 ( 737852 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:10PM (#9210669) Homepage Journal
    Even though the art in an OS is far from vital, it makes the experience easier. Un like some OS's with bad graphics, its like watching surgery.

    • Re:Art / os (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tri0de ( 182282 ) <dpreynld@pacbell.net> on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:39PM (#9210824) Journal
      Best quote from the story:
      "hardest thing is to create the drawing and this is something that no software can do for you."

      Amen

      I've got a couple of friends who are with great with computer graphics the way I was with photography: technical mastery but little artistic sensibility; I got Zone system and the Schwiempflug rule (converging fields of focus) down just like my buds have Quark/Photoslop whatever, but - somebody with artistic ability -that's a rarity,a bitch to teach and seldom combined with hacking ability

      • Re:Art / os (Score:2, Insightful)

        by supmylO ( 773375 )
        I agree. I think, in art especially, the technical aspect can take you only so far. Creativity is much harder to find, I wouldn't know I'm still working on stick figures.

        • Art / os-Wacom (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          I can't even do that. My Wacom tablet doesn't work with MDK10. I guess it's pencil sketches and scanner for me.

          "Creativity is much harder to find"

          Which only thrives in an environment of strong artist rights.

      • Re:Art / os (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Basje ( 26968 )
        somebody with artistic ability -that's a rarity,a bitch to teach and seldom combined with hacking ability

        I resent that. Often the most artistic people are hackers in their own right. And the best hackers are very artistic. Their artistic abilities just don't apply to canvas, or they don't apply them to canvas, but to their code.

        • Re: design is practical art (Score:5, Informative)

          by johnrpenner ( 40054 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @10:30AM (#9214868) Homepage

          so many people think that art is just about how things 'LOOK',
          but true art arises where form and function are integral --

          -- design is not veneer - steve jobs interview in fortune magazine [fortune.com] --

          Fortune Magazine: What has always distinguished the products of the
          companies you've led is the design aesthetic. Is your obsession with design
          an inborn instinct or what?

          Steve Jobs: We don't have good language to talk about this kind of thing.

          In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer.
          It's interior decorating.
          It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa.
          But to me, nothing could be
          further from the meaning of design.

          Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up
          expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.

          The iMac is not just the colour or translucence or the shape of the shell.
          The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer
          in which each element plays together.

          On our latest iMac, I was adamant that we get rid of the fan, because it
          is much more pleasant to work on a computer that doesn't drone all the time.

          That was not just "Steve's decision" to pull out the fan; it required an
          enormous engineering effort to figure out how to manage power better and do
          a better job of thermal conduction through the machine. That is the furthest
          thing from veneer. It was at the core of the product the day we started.

          This is what customers pay us for--to sweat all these details so it's easy
          and pleasant for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good
          at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's hard for
          them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything remotely
          like it.


          • -- Interview with Jonathan Ive (designer of the iMac) --

            Certainly, the PC industry has never revered design, preferring blocky
            beige boxes or, more recently, coloured go-faster curves devoid of real
            function. He's scornful of those who use 'swoopy shapes to look good,
            stuff that is so aggressively designed, just to catch the eye. I think
            that's arrogance, it's not done for the benefit of the user.'

            By contrast, he says, 'you won't be able to find a single thing on an
            Apple that hasn't had thought put into it'..
        • I apologize, you are quite right and I did not express myself clearly; of course all decent hackers are artists.

          I *MEANT* "skill with visual composition and realization in specific sketching, drawing and painting", at least in this context.
          That'll teach me to post before drinking my morning coffee.....
    • I kind of agree with you, and also don't agree with you.

      It's not vital in the sense, that you need nice graphics to make an application run faster, or the os to boot up faster. That's obvious.

      But for getting Linux a bigger piece of the desktop pie, I think that graphic design is extremely vital.

      I'm a graphic designer, that works on websites. My project manager and I create the way that a user interacts with the website. Although while working or even just talking about a project, our progammer does

  • You know what to expect: (Score:5, Funny)

    by irokitt ( 663593 ) <archimandrites-iaur@@@yahoo...com> on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:14PM (#9210687)
    Cue replies from Gimp-bashers in 3, 2, 1....


    • There's nothing wrong with GIMP. It's when people claim it can replace Photoshop is when the flame wars start. I'm not saying you are, so please don't take any offense.

      Face it, there's nothing like photoshop. Adobe! Please port!


  • Get Dell HP and others
    to agressively market preinstalled Linux machines .

    Everything else will fall into place

  • A test for a self sufficient OS is for it to be self hosted, or able to compile itself on itself.
    A good test of desktop self-sufficiency could be if an OS can make it's own high quality SVG icons.
    Linux is getting there, but not quite yet.

    • Re:Linux self-sufficiency. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by nacturation ( 646836 ) <nacturation AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday May 20, 2004 @10:07PM (#9210981) Journal
      You don't need a full-fledged OS in order to compile one. Any half-baked operating system which is functional enough and has a compiler worth its salt can compile Linux for example. All you're doing is taking source code and outputting machine code. That's not hard to do. [Not to say it's trivial, only that it's a well-understood and thoroughly solved problem.]

      This isn't really about self-sufficiency, I don't think. You can have a G5 running OS X and have a really awesome user interface but lack the software needed to recreate the interface. For example, if Photoshop or other graphics editing programs weren't available for the Mac, that doesn't detract in any way from the usability of the Mac interface. Yes, it's *better* if your operating system had the tools needed to recreate it... but usability isn't a function of self-sufficiency.

      Plus, this article is only one perspective on the matter. For people who live and breathe Photoshop, they're going to be disappointed with the native Linux experience as it won't meet their needs. Who cares about an operating system that can achieve an infinite uptime and has efficient multiprocessor thread pooling when they can't do their work? On the other hand, I've seen some truly amazing work done in GIMP, so it's a personal thing.

      • You don't need a full-fledged OS in order to compile one. Any half-baked operating system which is functional enough and has a compiler worth its salt can compile Linux for example.

        Actually, its very hard to get Linux to compile on anything but GCC, because it uses a lot of GCC specific constructs and language methods. Which is a pity, because other compilers offer improvements over GCC in various areas.

    • A good test of desktop self-sufficiency could be if an OS can make it's own high quality SVG icons.
      Linux is getting there, but not quite yet.

      Ok, name one thing you can't do in Inkscape [slashdot.org] that prevents us from making high quality SVG icons?

      Until Sodipodi 0.20+ [sodipodi.com], there was an argument that there was no decent Free Software SVG editing tool.

      Until Inkscape (a fork of Sodipodi with more refined goals and using C++), there was an argument that there was no decent Free Software SVG editing tool with a good UI.

      No
    • I work as a graphic artist (work for a company and freelance). At work I use both proprietary and GPL software for vector work (Inkscape) and at home, almost exclusively Inkscape. If you ask me, Inkscape *is* ready for prime time. Even Jimmac admits that his problem is being too locked in to Illustrator's way of doing things. Though Everaldo praises Inkscape, I'm shocked to read that he complains of Illustrator's lack of compatibility with real SVG (especially transparency), but fails to note that Inkscape

  • Linux art varies greatly.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by brxndxn ( 461473 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:18PM (#9210707)
    In Windows, the different icons and color schemes don't vary too much. Some programs have stupid icons - but most have fairly neat icons and artwork.

    However, in Linux IMO, it's not the case. Some icons and artwork looks amazing while others look absolutely horrible. After dabbling with linux a few times, I really can't stand how the different schemes of different programs don't seem to fit together too well. In Mandrake 10 (last Linux I've used), there were whole different styles of icons.. like, Open Office had it's own set that were X pixels by Y colors in Z-bit color.. while Random Mandrake Prog had icons A pixels by B colors in C-bit color.

    I am starting to think that I would rather just have an entire OS that didn't use Icons. Instead, it would be only labeled buttons.

    • Re:Linux art varies greatly.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by irokitt ( 663593 ) <archimandrites-iaur@@@yahoo...com> on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:25PM (#9210741)
      You bring up a good point, but recognize that Gnome is working on that with their interface policies. Free software tends to take a "make it work first, then make it look good" approach. What the community could really use is a few good artists that volunteer to make some of the ugly projects look good.

      One of my beefs is that some applications ship with ugly "basic" interfaces and expect users to look for skins to make it look better. In my mind, it should look good out of the box, and the skins should just make it look better.

      • Open Graphics Art Project (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Doug Merritt ( 3550 ) <<gro.euqramer> <ta> <guod>> on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:34PM (#9210797) Homepage Journal
        What the community could really use is a few good artists that volunteer to make some of the ugly projects look good

        There are many, many talented graphics artists in the world, but almost no one is asking for their help on these projects. Nor does the average programmer know where to go to find artists who are willing to help out.

        We need an Open Graphics Art Project to connect together open source programmers with open art artists.

        Same thing to a lesser extent with other professions like information architects (often found in the same person as a graphic artists, but not identical), usability/ergonomics, writing, game playability tuning, etc.

        Perhaps all it would take is the right web site to help these people find each other.

        • perhaps a website with a request que of icons/other art could be posted, and then submissions/changes can be rated?

          who did all the work on the Fireworks rebranding?
          • You're right, but why not take it a step further and have a standard icon library, with artwork that can be used by any programmer - similar in concept to the icons that Microsoft ships with Visual Studio, only better of course!
        • In my experience, artists aren't like programmers; they seem to be much less willing to 'waste' their talents on something that will be given away for free.
        • As someone who's done a lot of UI design work [iconfactory.com] I can pretty much say that this idea isn't going to work.

          The reason is that graphic artists aren't "scratching an itch" like the software developers who work on OSS. A lot of the wonderful tools that are created have a direct benefit to the people who created them in the first place.

          For a graphic artist, there's no real benefit (other than maybe building their portfolio.) And since they typically live off of hourly billings for their work, there's no financi

      • Gnome is working on that for it's interface policies

        True, that is documented, which is about all of gnome that is. A man page or two wouldn't hurt guys.

        As for implementation of the guidelines, gnome still has an incredibly long way to go with the heart of their own core project - gconf. Imagine a windows registry, obfiscate it, have one for each user and then only allow global alteration from command line tools that don't even have a man (or info) page. It's things like this that stop the gnome panel fr

      • I believe this should be, at least partly, the responsibility of the distribution companies. Too many of the Linux distros come with everything and the kitchen sink installed, and the end user gets a whole bunch of applications that look completely different.

        The distros should limit the number of applications that are included in a standard install to the few that the think that a typical user is really going to need, and then work on making each of them look the same. The other applications can then be

    • Re:Linux art varies greatly.. (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I am starting to think that I would rather just have an entire OS that didn't use Icons. Instead, it would be only labeled buttons.

      That's one of the main reasons I like KDE: All the toolbars and menus can be set to be text. Loads of cryptic little icons piss me off, and I therefore find Windows and Mac much harder to use than KDE because of their dependence on pictures instead of words.

    • I think you just don't notice the crappy icons as much in Windows because Windows icons tend to be smaller and simpler. KDE, especially, has very lush, big icons, so crappy icons tend to stick out very badly.
    • Sure. Very good points. And since we are discussing fixing Linux's desktop, lets please throw in the fact that it all starts with XWindows. If you're going to fix it, fix it from the foundation up. Linux needs something else. I love XWindows. But it's LOTS of overhead for most folks. Except a few power users, most people don't use XWindows's functionality at all. Something much simpler would do nicely. It's like installing a hydraulic lift and pnumatic tools in your home garage. For shade tree mechanic work

    • Redhat is doing a good job of making all standard applications have a consistent look and feel (BlueCurve).

      They even followed Ximian's lead and made custom Open Office icons [redhat.com].

    • How about simplifying it even more, where all you had to do was type in the name of the program and it would run! And you just had to type something simple in to get to a new folder, and it would give you a list of the contents

      Oh wait, that's DOS.

      (I'm not being sarcastic, I would seriously sometimes prefer DOS).

  • It's going that way... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:22PM (#9210726) Homepage
    Desktop Linux for the common user is an eventuality, not merely a possibility.

    There is way too much interest displayed by business both large and small to see Linux displace MS Windows for the cost savings alone. So far, it's primarily server-side stuff but moving from server to desktop is also an eventuality.

    So any time I see some article stating "Linux doesn't have this or that" or "...isn't ready..." I start to yawn a bit. I think it's nice that they're honest enough not to say that it will never happen. :)

  • Disappointing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Pan T. Hose ( 707794 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:32PM (#9210781) Homepage Journal
    An interview about art and usability of free software and not a single word about dyne:bolic [dynebolic.org]? I am very disappointed.

    • Some background (Score:3, Informative)

      by Pan T. Hose ( 707794 )

      Just in case there are still some Slashdotters who do not yet know dyne:bolic [dynebolic.org], please let me quote dyne:bolic [dynebolic.org] website:

      "dyne:bolic is shaped on the needs of media activists, artists and creatives, being a practical tool for multimedia production: you can manipulate and broadcast both sound and video with tools to record, edit, encode and stream, all using only free software!"

      "dyne:bolic is a GNU/Linux distribution simply running from a CD, without the need to install anything, able to recognize most

    • And yet ... they are using blinking text tags on thier web site. Egads!

      • And yet ... they are using blinking text tags on thier web site. Egads!

        I have failed to mention it for I am not using a blinking browser. In any event, I did not realize it was relevant to answer the very question whether their operating system should be discussed in the context of art and multimedia production using Linux and the usability thereof. Blinking tags or otherwise, in my opinion discussing art in Linux without evaluating dyne:bolic is like discussing Linux desktop usability and ease of u

        • Chill, man. No offense intended.

          All I was saying was, we're discussing the UI side of an OS, and here's this distro that, while no doubt very nifty, use the Big No-No of web authoring smack on their front page. I just thought it was peculiar.

  • Inspiration (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rick Zeman ( 15628 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:36PM (#9210803)
    ...and here I thought that (too much) of the visual inspiration for both was Windows XP (and Windows 98 before that), hence the garish colors and the unnecessary complexity and eye-candy.
  • If you want to use the KDE icons in gtk+ applications, you should check out this [kde-look.org] page which builds upon the GTK-QT theme engine. It works well, I'm using it right now to chat on Gaim.
  • What does he think?

  • In conclusion, once more I would like to thank the community of user and developers of KDE for using my work and for supporting me. You have no idea how much this has been important for me. I also thank all Linux distros that are using Crystal in their projects. I really feel honored. Special thanks to Lindows team, you have been awesome!

    Doesn't he know about the MS lawsuit? It's now Lin---- right? Oh, no, wait, it's Linspire [linspire.com] now.

    Can't blame him for not keeping up, I guess? :)

  • Linux has the best variety (Score:4, Insightful)

    by miyako ( 632510 ) <miyako AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:57PM (#9210916) Homepage Journal
    While in terms of absolute best visual quality, I have to say that OS X beats any linux theme i've seen (although a number of the aqua themes are really nice), I think linux wins for customizability.
    While others may disagree, I think that Windows XP has perhaps the absolute worst graphical style of any modern OS.
    Aqua is really slick, but eventually it gets old, wheras there are dozens of really nice looking themes for KDE.
    Even though I have a personal preference for KDE, ,Gnome2 is also looking really nice, though in a different way.
    I think the biggest advantage Linux has over other OS's is that, while there may not be as many artist using Linux, any artist who wishes has the option of adding artwork or making any other changes to any given program, and the best of those can be incorperated into the program.

    • Aqua is really slick, but eventually it gets old, wheras there are dozens of really nice looking themes for KDE

      (do you mean Luna, XP's default visual style, or did you really mean Aqua, OS X's interface?) This article was more about icons than look & feel. While many people may not like the Playschool look of the Luna widgets, I've never heard anyone complain about the new icons.

      However, if you want to talk about look & feel, you can change that in XP just as well as in KDE. ThemeXP [themexp.org] has a

    • While others may disagree, I think that Windows XP has perhaps the absolute worst graphical style of any modern OS.

      Are you talking about the XP-Theme or the classic theme? The classic windows theme is amazing imho. Very clean and very crisp.

      • For the most part... Every time I go back to Windows that horizontal gradient on the titlebars makes me shudder.
      • Are you talking about the XP-Theme or the classic theme? The classic windows theme is amazing imho. Very clean and very crisp.
        Well, I was refering to the default XP theme. The default XP theme is absolute crap, the classic theme is bland and rather ugly, but no worse than the default KDE theme.
      • I agree that the XP theme [xvsxp.com] is the worst theme I've ever used. The classic Windows theme is better, but it's still no OS X. I'm really impressed by Plastik [kde.org] in the newest version of KDE. Plastik doesn't jump out and say "Look at me! Look at me!" like XP does. It lets you focus on what you're doing instead of trying to make every little widget look like the prettiest thing in the world like XP does. Plastik looks almost as good as Aqua [resexcellence.com].

        That being said, I'm not a huge fan of the way the KDE panel looks. It sti

    • Aqua is really slick, but eventually it gets old, wheras there are dozens of really nice looking themes for KDE.

      Plenty of themes exist for Mac OS X/Aqua; check out MacThemes [macthemes.net], for example. The themes that are available range from awesome to awful, but that's true of KDE themes as well, I would imagine.
    • While others may disagree, I think that Windows XP has perhaps the absolute worst graphical style of any modern OS.
      I somehow doubt you'll get many people disagreeing with you here.

  • the applicationss they use We wants applicationss, my preciouss...
  • ...confronting Linux usability that /. conflates the term with "art" in a headline.
  • ** Mac users please ignore as you might consider this a bash/insult/flame **

    Why is it that most of the skins/themes that I find on sites like www.kde-look.org all try to emulate MacOS ?

    I understand that a lot of people like and enjoy cutesy and "fluffy" in their icon sets and skins, but for crying out loud those people are our girlfriends and/or Wives. We know that they only play Sims or Lemmings, and they looove clicking on everything they get in their emails.

    MS catered to these types with the d
    • They may all try emulating it because it's one of the better looks. As much as people complain about brushed metal windows and the like or the "flashy eye candy" of OS X it blends into the background of the environment perfectly. They don't tend to take away from useability, they tend to improve it.

      Large icons (especialy as desktop resolutions get higher) that are very descriptive as to what the item is are wonderful tools. People operate visualy, the more distinct seperate items are the better.

      Visual clu
    • "Why is it that most of the skins/themes that I find on sites like www.kde-look.org all try to emulate MacOS ?" Because icons bounce in MacOS. 'Nuff said.
    • I'll bite.....

      "but for crying out loud those people are our girlfriends and/or Wives"

      It's actually my BOYFIEND who's blindly addicted to OSX. I'm the one who put Yellowdog on our old iBook to make it usefull. I had to show him how to use tab-autocomplete in the terminal and how to use man pages when he couldn't remember what flags to use, for crying out loud. And I'm just a girl. Maybe it's this prejudice against the opposite sex which results in "geeks" always complaining about how they don't get t

      • Hello foot, allow me to introduce Mouth. You two will be together a lot in the near future.. (sigh)

        Sorry.

        #1) Not all women are technophobic.
        #2) Not all men are technophyllic. (sp?)
        #3) I am often an idiot.

        I am just making a generalized comment in an attempt to illustrate a point.

        If you were offended I am sorry, and I hope you accept my apology. (refer to item #3)
        • I didn't mean the comment as personally as you seem to have taken it. I have been bothered by the incompotent girlfriend/wife comments for a while, and you just happened to give me the opportunity I needed to vent. I readily admit that women are in the minority when it comes to adopting/not fearing technology, but that doesn't mean all women. Maybe I'm just bitter cause all those other women make me look bad. The thing is, it's hard for a women to get taken seriously in the computer world. Some of us a

  • Kde-look.org.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by msimm ( 580077 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @10:59PM (#9211222) Homepage
    I'd just like to remind you all (I do this periodically) to take a look at www.kde-look.org [kde-look.org] and check it regularly! For whatever reason this is the *one* Linux based site (well, kde anyway) that has managed to form a healthy alliance between the graphics world and the Linux community.

    This is the kind of cross pollination we *really* need. And before anyone starts to say anything about other attempts, review the format they are using. Look at the little things like the clean organization and the *feedback* options. This site sets a standard I have yet to see anyone live up to and it does it while encouraging the artists! My hats off. Lets encourage more positive interaction with our users and those of us with an artistic bend!
  • It can't be said enough: The graphics are not the interface.

    A great UI should feel good as well as look good, but the 'feel' part is ultimately far, far more important. It's great that there's people who are contributing this sort of work to KDE and Gnome but the best icons in the world can't save you if the application is confusing. Pine has a good, easy to use interface and it has no graphics. Conversely you can get eleventy billion skins for XMMS but that doesn't make the dialog for selecting and addin
    • It's not as crazy as the chicken and the egg problem, as in which is more important or which comes first, but I dare say that instructive icons do go a certain amount of the way in making the interface intuitive.
      I would also like to add that with something as beautiful as a keyboard to use for input, it really doesn't matter how and where the buttons/menus are placed as long as every command can be customized to be run with a keyboard shortcut - then you essentially create your own interface - and THIS feat

  • Most baseless comment (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tyrione ( 134248 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @11:41PM (#9211421) Homepage
    In the middle of the way,however, I found Linux, which also looked much more beautiful than Windows. Soon I installed the WindowMaker of Alfredo Kojima, which is a cloned and improved interface of NextStep.

    Like hell it is an improved interface of NeXTStep. It's a bastardization of NeXTStep without the Power of NeXTStep--no WindowServer.app--not to mention NeXTStep is a UI Design Paradigm still unequaled today in its consistency, productivity and ease-of-use. And MECCA (Openstep 4.0 Release Candidate 1) with the TabbedView Shelf that still hasn't resurfaced in OS X (hopefully one day) was an improvement over NeXTStep/Openstep but never saw the light of day, unless of course you happened to have worked at NeXT and/or you worked after the merger at Apple and either worked or hung out in Engineering.

    GNUstep is nowhere as elegant as NeXTStep and they know it, but you can't fault the developers since Steve hasn't ever nor will he ever open source any of that code.

    The moment KDE adds native Objective-C support by working with GNUstep folks than just maybe then we'll actually see Linux and Apple really bring a one-two punch to the Enterprise. How come? If both platforms support Cocoa's Portable Distributed Objects you can leverage existing PC hardware running Linux while bringing in PowerPC Hardware with OS X/X Server and suddenly any "holes" that the Windows World claims become even more fantastical, if not just blatantly bitter sweet moans of frustration.

    But no. We have people maddenly working on C# in hopes to make sure everyone can connect to .NET Services. I'm sure Microsoft doesn't mind since you still have to pay the piper, one way or another.

    • public static void shamelessPlug() { I know of one linux distro that is bringing linux up the quality of a STEP. it's called GenSTEP, and I think they really have something going for them. There is some mighty impressive stuff going on already. http://cthulos.sourceforge.net/ }
      • wow, lost all whitespace in that. I really need to hit preview.

        public static void shamelessPlug() {

        I know of one linux distro that is bringing linux up the quality of a STEP. it's called GenSTEP, and I think they really have something going for them. There is some mighty impressive stuff going on already. (added) working .app bundles that are location agnostic, and no cryptic 3 letter folder-names.

        http://cthulos.sourceforge.net/

        }

    • And MECCA (Openstep 4.0 Release Candidate 1) with the TabbedView Shelf that still hasn't resurfaced in OS X (hopefully one day)

      For those like me that didn't understand the tabbed shelf reference in the parent, Google sends us the goods [occam.com].

  • Good design is just part of the solution (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rfz ( 534875 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @11:49PM (#9211498)
    The design of interactive systems is an entire discipline. It is as hard and as important as software engineering. Very few software developers have even the most basic training in this area. Also, analyzing and designing interactive systems is very expensive. It takes time and it requires some sort of contact with your intended user base before you start writing code. Many projects could use external help. What we need is to call human-computer interaction experts to the game. If a few experts could buy into the free software idea and do some free (as in beer) consulting, everyone would benefit. How do you do free as in beer consulting? You publish every deliverable on the net, under a Creative Commons license. This way, HCI students will have access to the methods used in real projects. These students, in turn, will be even easier to draft. I ask you all to turn you advocacy powers in this direction.

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